Alarms sound in the early morning. Sirens wail on Symphony Road. It’s happening again. The neighborhood is burning nightly and there’s nothing the tenants can do but wait in fear.

During the 1970s, Boston residents were under siege. Real

estate businessmen were making money by burning apartment buildings to the ground, leaving the poor, elderly, and minority tenants homeless and several dead.

The tenants’ cries for arson investigations were dismissed. Arson was hard to prosecute and arson for profit was business-as-usual across the nation. A brave group of community activists were determined to save their neighborhood and themselves. Their hard work revealed a pattern in the fires and it was enough to convince the state to prosecute and eventually convict 32 men in what was the largest and most complex arson for profit ring in the country.

Project Status

Burning Greed is moving ahead, but slowed down a bit while searching to replace our post services.